The View From Mudsock Heights: The Christmas lesson of my father's old, worn framing hammer

Family travel around the holidays is a common thing. I don't normally undertake such activities, but when I do, it's a doozy.

Recently, I drove from here to Fort Lauderdale, then from Fort Lauderdale to Milwaukee, then from Milwaukee to here, in the space of a week, with three days in Milwaukee. It was family business unrelated to the holidays, or so I thought. It turns out I was wrong about that.

In Florida I saw the younger of my two sisters, and her son. They are delightful, good-hearted people, a pleasure to be around. Our task was to remove family possessions from storage and pack them for shipment to the home of my other sister, in Milwaukee. Where I would go not to unpack them -- they would arrive later -- but to attend the college graduation in Madison, at age 19, of a nephew, a brilliant, funny, optimistic young man whose sole flaw, best I can tell, is his determination to become a lawyer.

In the car I carried some items not easily packed and some I intended to bring on home with me. In the latter group is what remains of my father's tools.

Looking through those tools brought back a flood of long-buried memories. Many of those tools could rightly be associated with my getting in trouble when I had undertaken some project and my dad went for pliers, or square, or tape measure, to discover that it was not where it belonged. Here, now, were the electrician's pliers with which he wired our house. Here, the multitude of screwdrivers of all shapes, sizes and descriptions, and the huge and horrible iron pipe wrenches, employed when there was an especially messy repair to be made.

And my father's hammer was there, too.

It's a big framing hammer with a wooden handle, but he could have driven a straight pin into walnut with it if he'd wanted. He built houses with that hammer, including the one I grew up in -- the ones I grew up in, really, for he build my grandparents' house next door with it, too. There's probably no hammer ever that's been used so thoroughly or to such good effect.

But it didn't remind me of those things. It reminded me of cold, clear winter nights in the weeks before Christmas, when Christmas presents were being built. My parents did not have a lot of money, so my dad would often make things for my mom, or my sisters. I would help, if that's the word; in any case, my woodworking education got advanced during those times.

It was a secretive thing, but secretive for the right reasons. After supper, we'd go to the basement of my grandparents' house, away from inquisitive visits by prospective recipients. I remember especially the sewing box of home-grown walnut for my sister. My father had the plans, with draftsman precision, in his head; I was not adept at envisioning them, but that was not important.

I remember the mahogany spice cabinet, decorative but not too decorative, that he made for my mother. In Florida, packing it, inspecting it, I realized that it was made of some scraps of solid mahogany paneling, left over from a job someplace. (My father had for a time been a general contractor.)

And I remember the precision with which he wielded that hammer. Looking at some of the things he made, I see round-headed brass nails driven by that heavy piece of steel, but there is nowhere the telltale dent of the off-center strike. He knew that hammer the way a virtuoso knows his musical instrument. And it was sometimes musical, too: when he used it for framing, those 16-penny nails would resonate in higher notes with each blow, testifying as to how far it was driven this time. Usually took about three strikes to send it home, nothing tentative about it.

My father's hammer brings back, too, memories of Christmas mornings, which were highly staged events in our house and just perfect. There were, of course, some store-bought toys, and sweaters and socks and the like; maybe something my mom had crocheted, though she usually crocheted afghans for friends and relatives. Then there were the things that had been built, sometimes still in need of finish, not as flashy as the other things, but special.

Of course those toys and treats and garments are long gone, but the things that my father made with that hammer endure, in reality and in our hearts. They were and are as much a sign of Christmas as the wooden creche, which he had also built, that made its seasonal appearance atop the old Philco teevee set.

Looking at that hammer, its handle worn and dry, I remember that the best gifts are those that are of us, rather than acquired in a buying frenzy. They are the crystallization of our love and affection. To me, that has a lot to do with Christmas.

Editor's note: Dennis E. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. His column appears on Mondays. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.